Living gently, lovingly, joyously.

Jar Cosy

I recently wrote about ditching the chemicals, so I felt like a hypocrite by continuing to sip tea out of a large plastic travel mug while at work. The reason I used such a large plastic mug is that the ceramic mugs at work are small and too light for my excited, gesturing arms. My work laptop is less than a year old and is on its second keyboard because of those arms, so hard-to-spill liquid vessels are a bonus at my desk.

So, I bought a canning jar. Yes, I purchased one single solitary jar, because in the UK you do not buy large boxes of mason or ball jars. In the UK, you buy a single jar or perhaps a small set. Once the jar arrived, we sized one another up and have been inseparable since. The plan was to leave it at work but that means several things: 1) I would not be able to carry hot drinks to work in the morning; 2) I would not be able to use it to pack my lunch in a leak-free container unless I went back to a plastic clip box (I admit, the no plastic approach is a slippery slope!); 3) I would not be able to make personal servings of lemonade by dumping lemon juice, sugar and water into the jar, screwing on the lid and then shaking it wildly; and, I wouldn’t hear the satisfying sound of the lid screwing on and off that clearly sparks childhood memories of canning jars at home.

Obviously, I needed to dress up this little jar to protect my hands from the heat when drinking tea and to protect it when I chuck it into my bag. I used aran weight yarn, worked in a spiral and made this little cosy that comes complete with handles for carrying or a ‘scarf’ for catching any splashes!

I’ve added another without handles to my cosy collection. If you want to make some jar cosies for yourself, the pattern is below:

Row 1: Begin with a round of 6, placing a marker at the beginning of the row.

Row 2: Increase every stitch

Row 3: Increase every 2nd stitch

Row 4: Increase every 3rd stitch

Row 5: Increase every 4th stitch

Row 6: Increase every 5th stitch, ending with 36 stitches

Row 7: Only increase 3 times during this round (round starts with 36 stitches, so increase every 12 stitches)

Row 8: Begin round with 39 stitches and increase three times, which is every 13 stitches. End with 42 stitches.

Thank you! I recently bought some darker cotton yarn to make another cozy and am planning on testing out/writing out what I did for this one. It is crocheted and is pretty simple so I’ll just include the directions on my blog. When it’s done, I’ll link to it from here.